Finding the Right Ending for The Music of Pedro (or Why it Took Five Months and a Quarantine to Finish This Blog Post)

I started the first draft of this post back in December and then quickly realized I was still far too burned out to write it. Take wrapping up a massive celebratory launch party, add a sudden move across states, multiply all of the above with the holidays, and then throw in a Utah winter with a surprise broken bone and two crutches, and I just wanted to crawl under my bed covers and hibernate forever. Enter the 2020 quarantine and here we are—the everyman’s world screeched to a halt and I’m out of excuses. I even finally finished the ebook!

Today, as I nurse my own version of a quarantini and click through photos from the fiesta (credit to the multi-talented Design by Sheri), I’m not only overwhelmed with gratitude for everyone who came to show their support for my dad, the book, and Immigrant Legal Services, but I’m also struck by something I took for granted until recent weeks: proximity.

An Emphasis on Family

From beginning to end, The Music of Pedro was a family endeavor and I wanted everything about the launch fiesta to emphasize communion and community, passion and creation—all things I believe define “family” and ought to direct us as we build and protect our individual, local, and global families.

Five months ago at least 200 of us crowded into a greenhouse to dance, eat, and celebrate. Today we bunker down to protect each other. In that way we remain close. Resolutely connected. Like siblings.

November 8th, 2019, The Launch Fiesta (129 Days Before Quarantine)

The story of The Music of Pedro began for me with a request from my dad— Help me rewrite my novel—and “ended” with the launch party on November 8th, 2019. Four years passed in between.

The following morning, November 9th, I threw my bags into my fiance’s car and together we made for the airport to fly to Hawaii. I was voiceless and exhausted. My larynx was fully inflamed from overuse compounded by an all-but-recovered cold. By the end of the fiesta there were knives in my throat I thought would never leave. I downloaded a text-to-speech app the day we left the mainland, resigning myself to muteness, and for the next ten days, I washed myself and my mind in honeyed tea and ocean water. Like Margarita, I ran to the beach and entered the sea with purpose. I bobbed under the night sky, straining myself toward communion, healing, and replenishment.

The launch ended too quickly and I regretted my loss of voice like I would a bad deal with a sea witch. After months of preparation—and before that, years of writing and revision–I wasn’t ready for those two hours to vanish like a microburst. I wasn’t ready to watch it pass without a voice to communicate with, or for the jolt of finality when it was time to start taking the decorations down. I was reeling by the end of it. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ve stopped reeling ever since.

The Hardest Part of Writing a Book Is…

The ending–getting to it, writing it, and then accepting it. Reaching the final scenes of your own novel is a cathartic experience, but concluding MoP was especially rewarding. It’s a book that was marked for personal significance long before I was born, inspired as it was by pieces of my dad’s history in Mexico. Plenty of thought and emotion went into wrapping up Pedro’s story, and with the planning of the book launch, I took as much care in ending the story behind the book.

Why the Launch Became What It Became

I was that happy to be finished and I wanted to give it a raucous sendoff. I rallied my family together and we approached the planning of it in the spirit of a wedding while making it a public event. In fact, I picked Highland Gardens as the venue because one of my little brothers had his reception there a few years before. The surrounding greenery was exactly the setting I wanted to replicate the Pivamoc of my dad’s description and memory.

My cousin, Sheri, became my co-planner and it was because of her we collected as many donations from local companies as we did so that we could run a successful prize drawing to benefit Immigrant Legal Services. She also found Ballet Folklorico, who were gracious enough to perform for us for a solid half hour, even though we had such a turnout that we ran out of food to feed them. Which we felt really badly about. (My dad later hosted a dinner to cook for them.) My sisters and sister-in-law found Mi Lindo Guadalajara, who agreed to cater for us at a discount, and my brother and his wife Cozzi performed live music. Another sister found our sponsor, Creekside Mortgage, who helped make the scope of the event possible.

Other siblings and friends manned tables, shared and liked posts, loaned and donated supplies and decorations, not to mention backed our Kickstarter so we could afford to have printed books available to buy at the party. And to everyone that came, thank you! All in all, it was an incredible experience and I hope one you now get to remember as a positive “last hurrah” before the quarantine.

Wrapping Up

In the hopefully near future, we plan to hold readings of the book, but in the meantime, we hope you consider adding The Music of Pedro to your quarantine reading list and sharing your thoughts in an Amazon review. Click here to buy the ebook to start reading now or order the print-on-demand version to have your own in-the-flesh copy delivered to your door. 

Stay safe, stay healthy, and happy reading!